When journalist Kamau Ngotho was assigned to sniff out terrorist Fazul Mohamed

Recce squad at the Dusit D2 hotel on January 15, 2018. [File]

Recently, some Western countries issued terror alerts and advised their citizens to be cautious and stay vigilant. Not a bad thing, but for the breach of protocol. When you get wind that something could harm a friend, you quietly pass the message, not shout from the rooftops.

One of our best friends in the fight against terrorism never talks about it. In the 1998 attack, the country dispatched a rescue team that helped retrieve two victims miraculously alive after days in the rubble. And in the November 2002 attack in Mombasa, the country sent a team that hunted down the culprits and fed them to crocodiles in Tana-River.

Mission in Comoros

Talking about terrorism reminds me of one of the most delicate assignments I have taken in my career. It was in April 2006 when I travelled to the Comoro islands to trace the origins of the mastermind of the 1998 and 2002 terrorist attacks, Fazul Abdullah Mohamed. At the time, he was still at large before he was killed in a drone attack hiding in Somalia five years later.

I travelled under the disguise of covering presidential elections due in the islands at the time. I landed at Hahaya Airport in the capital of Moroni on a sunny Monday aboard Air Tanzania from Dar-es-Salaam. While in Nairobi, I had been given contact with who I immediately hooked up. I had to play the motions until an opportune time came to broach the subject of my interest but still remain very careful not to raise any suspicion.

Making of a terrorist

I learnt Fazul was a suspicious character from an early age. Ismail Haki, a grocer in Volovolo market near Fazul's birthplace, told me he and the would-be terrorist attended the same Madrasa and worshipped at an old mosque known as Mishiri wa Djouni.

He said Fazul was a mysterious person even as a teenager. He also remembered him as an unhappy young man who was always complaining.

“Fazul was secretive, always keeping to himself. I am not surprised that he later became an international terrorist. He never struck me as a straight-forward person”, remembered his childhood neighbour.

Fazul came from a large and famous family in the capital Moroni. His father was a well-known cleric. Several of his cousins migrated to Pakistan in the 1970s. Haki said he highly suspected that Fazul’s relatives in Pakistan inducted him into the world of extremism. As a young man, he remembered, Fazul knew more than the average Comoro boy. He was always quoting this or that philosopher or religious leader.

Another of Fazul old schoolmates, Mahmoud Mze, who was with him at EL-Falah madrasa told me: “I knew Fazul at school. He was a few classes ahead of me. He was a bit reserved and a recluse of sorts. Only argument on matters of religion seemed to interest him. On that, he could argue with heated passion.” Fazul went to Pakistan for his university education.

The next thing he heard is that Fazul had quit university to join Mujahidin, whose financier and spiritual guru was Osama bin Laden. The old school-mate said Fazul most likely picked extremist inclinations during college days in Pakistan which was sympathetic to the Mujahidin in Afghanistan. “He was recruited here (Comoros) but poisoned outside,” he said.

Fazul’s sister, Halima, used to run a clothes shop on Magoudjou Street in the capital Moroni. His uncle, Sagaff Abdullah, had a mattress shop in the same premises opposite the island’s largest public hospital, El-Maanrouf. Nobody knew where the two relatives of Fazul “disappeared” to once the latter was uncovered as an international terrorist. When we asked the owner of the premises whether he knew of their whereabouts, he nearly got physical.

“Don’t ask me about those people. I don’t know anything about them. Get out of here and never come back,” he screamed. Another of Fazul’s early acquaintances I spoke to in Comoros was Issihaka Mahafidhou, a freelance photographer who trained in Kenya.

He knew Fazul in their teenage years. He said that much as the young man exhibited strange tendencies, he never betrayed the possibility of joining international terrorists.

Later, I would have a peep at an English version of a 40-page manuscript by Fazul in Arabic. In it, he comes across as a religious fanatic and a man driven by bitterness.

Confessions

He starts by introducing himself in three sets of names - Abdullah Muhammad aka Ali Fadil Husyn Mulla Ati aka Harun Fazul.

He writes in the preamble:  “I have decided to take a risk and write this book to clarify the truth and to raise the morale of the Mujahidin everywhere. I have purposely written in Arabic because I love the language, and hope that people will benefit from it. If I will get the opportunity, I will translate it into Swahili, English and French.”

He goes on: “I am writing this book under a dangerous security situation because I am wanted internationally by the FBI and the Mossad, and all the countries of the world. For that reason, I would like to point out here that you will not get the information in full detail. I will write about everything when time allows.”

He proceeds to give details on his admission to college in Pakistan to study medicine only to change to religious studies. He didn’t complete the religious course either. He was recruited by the Mujahidin and moved to Afghanistan in the first year of his studies.

The manuscript indicates Fazul had made up his mind about what he wanted to do from an early age. On his decision to change courses at university in Karachi, he wrote: “I always wonder how my mother would feel if she heard that I opted for a religious university considering that she wanted me to study medicine. What is worse, how would she react if she heard that I was going to Afghanistan when I had not completed even one year in Pakistan?”

But there was no stopping him from his chosen path. He wrote: “In fact, there was no need to ask for parents’ permission because my true intentions for going to Pakistan were primarily to get military training and to learn how to use several types of modern weapons.”

Once in Afghanistan, the new recruits were dispatched to various Mujahidin training camps that were simply known as “guest-houses”. Fazul’s “guest house” was called Bayt-Al-Ansar, which means the “adherents’ house”.  It was here that he first got in touch with Osama bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda group in 1993.

“The guest house was for Mujahidin or Muhajir who did not belong to any particular group. It was supported by Osama bin Laden, Shaykh Abdallah Azzam and other donors. He says the most feared of the “guesthouses” was Bayt-Al-Shuhada. It was personally directed by Osama.” 

He tells of his life in Sudan and Somalia from the mid-1990s which happens to be the duration when he, funded by Osama bin Laden, masterminded the 1998 and 2002 terrorist attacks in Kenya.

Postscript: The lesson learned in my mission to Comoros is that terrorists live among us, hence the need for me and you never to drop guard. Report any suspicious characters you see. As President Uhuru Kenyatta once said, security starts with me and you.